Archaeology of the Hunter-Gatherers of the Central Mountains of Tierra del Fuego: A Techno-Functional and Distributional Approach

Abstract

This work was conceived as a contribution to the knowledge about human settlement in the Isla Grande de Tierra Del Fuego by the hunter-gatherer societies that inhabited the area until the early twentieth century. The central theme is the study of technological organization as an approach to the management strategies of biotic and abiotic resources, as well as the occupation of space, considering the different environments represented in the area and the differential supply of resources.The main starting hypothesis was to consider that technological organization, as an organizational strategy, depends on the social framework in which it is inserted, but also reflects technical knowledge and decisions related to resource management modes. Therefore, in a given geographical scope, the evaluation of the characteristics and diversity of available resources can be a key factor in explaining archaeological variability. In order to carry out this research, the geographic scope of the Fuegian Mountain Range was selected, which corresponds to the dispersion of the sub-Antarctic forest in the Big Island.The research is part of a framework project entitled "Archaeological Project Heart of the Island" (PACI), directed by Dr. M. E. Mansur, which has been carried out at CADIC since the 1990s. The project aims to evaluate the human aboriginal settlement and characteristics of the dynamic occupation of the sub-Antarctic forest in the central strip of Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego and was developed in various stages. In the initial phase, various areas of the northern area of Lake Fagnano were explored, as well as the de la Turba river, Yehuin and Chepelmut lakes basins. Marine I site was then excavated, allowing the characterization of transitory hunter-gatherer camps over the late Holocene range (Mansur et al. 2000; Mansur 2002; De Angelis et al. 2013a; Mansur and De Angelis 2013). The second stage includes a work in collaboration with the Autonomous University of Barcelona. This work was co-directed by Dr. R. Piqué, in the course of which sites were explored and excavated in the central-north zone of the heart of the island region, in particular the site of Ewan (Mansur and Piqué 2009), this paper will make reference to Ewan.This research is included in the third stage of PACI, particularly in the projects entitled "Society and Rituals: Archaeological Research in the Heart of the Island" (PICT ANPCYT Nº 1236) and "Environment, Resources and Population Dynamics in Hunter-gatherer Societies of the Central Belt of Tierra del Fuego, Argentina" (PICT ANPCYT N° 2648). As a general framework, both projects seek to deepen the study of the causes of the archaeological record variability in order to propose instrumental methodologies that allow us to look at the characterization of the social and economic organization of hunter-gatherer societies, from the point of view of the analysis of natural resources management, the resources introduced by Europeans and the spatial organization of technical activities.